Pages - Menu

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

A few days ago, I posted a blog on Stage-gate model that received
lot of comments for suitability of the model to use in today’s world where companies
are under pressure to roll-out new products in shortest possible time-frame and constrained budgets.

While Stage-gate model has proved to be successful and
highly evolved model with 70%-80% companies using it for new product
development, it has also been criticized for being too linear, rigid and planned
as well as being non-adaptive. Product Managers are looking for more agile,
flexible and dynamic processes that put something in front of the customers and
involve them in early stages of new product development. The idea is to get
something out to the customers in the form of “virtual product” or “crude
working model” that they can feel, use and respond to providing useful insights
for product under development. Thus, the product might be less than half defined
while entering development stage, but it evolves by adapting to new information
and moved through development and testing. This change to stage-gate model is
what people know as “Agile Product Management”.

AGILE PRODUCT MANAGEMENT is a product development approach that
adds to Stage-gate model and reduces development time by eliminating undesired
dependencies, incorporating customer involvement in early stages of the product
thereby reducing the chances of product failure at launch.

Agile Product Management

Agile Product Management allows early kick-off for the development
stage (Stage 3) of the NPD process once identification of the CVP (Customer
Value Proposition) is completed in scoping stage with the intention to develop something
that the customer can see and provide feedback. It does not require Product
Managers to finish writing down Product Requirement Document enlisting detailed
feature set or wait for other departments to finish on their tasks. Rather, it allows
them to efficiently manage cross-functional teams working in parallel on tasks
of their domain.

While rest of the cross-functional team works toward other activities
of “scoping” and “business case” stages (market sizing, P&L projection, GTM
plan and more), product manager creates the story-board and requirements for first
(maybe few more) sprint cycle for the product development. While technical team
completes initial sprints, the product requirements are completely identified; TG2
gate is qualified, and product comes to visible and usable form. At this
juncture, QA team is involved in testing the product and analyzes the
suitability with the original value proposition.

Once the product comes to a usable form after few cycles of QA
testing, customers are involved for early stage testing and feedback to ensure
adherence to market requirements. Please mind that these customers are not open-market
customers but the internal customers from cross-functional groups, other
employees in the organization, friends and family members.

It is very likely that the final product that is
launched to the market is very different from what was targeted at the
beginning of first sprint. It is primarily because, over the time, more
features are added; more changes are done as recommendation from the work of
cross-functional teams for “scoping” and “business case” stages are incorporated.

Some of the benefits of using Agile Product Development
process are:

Reduced time to market

Reduced uncertainty and chances of launch failure

Eliminate undesired dependencies among cross-functional
groups

Early customer feedback

Deliver as fast as possible

Most efficient way to use Agile Product Development is to
customize the development and testing stage to progress in concurrence with “scoping”
and “business case” stage and best fit for the project goal. The sprints should
be planned to achieve maximum value from the product in early stages of
development. This will ensure delivering a stable and maintainable product that
satisfies your customer.

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

New Product
Development: is an organizational process that includes set of
activities required to deliver a new product to the market identified on the
basis of perception of market opportunity. Each organization has its own new
product development process and they make changes to it over the time learning
from experience and adapting to market standards. However, all of them
typically follow stage-gate model. According to several independent research
studies (i.e. Product Development & Management Association, AMR Research,
Booz-Allen Hamilton, etc.) between 70-85% of leading U.S. companies now use
Stage-Gate to drive new products to market.

Stage-gate model:

According to the official site of stage-gate model, “Stage-Gate®
is a value-creating business process and risk model designed to quickly and profitably
transform an organization's best new ideas into winning new products. When
embraced by organizations, it creates a culture of product innovation
excellence - product leadership, accountability, high-performance teams,
customer and market focus, robust solutions, alignment, discipline, speed and
quality.”

Stage-gate model

How it works:

Stage-Gate System is a conceptual and operational road map
for moving a new-product development from idea to launch. It is a product management technique in which
any product development process is divided into various stages separated by
gates.

Each stage consists of a set of activities and has to quality
corresponding gate to start with the activities of the next stage. The gates serve
as quality-control checkpoints with three goals: ensure quality of execution,
evaluate the business rationale, and approve the project plan and resources. At
each gate, the decision to continue product development is taken by the manager
or steering committee based on the analysis done till that stage or information
available at the time. The process is iterative in nature and product manager can
switch to any of the previous stages in case of failure to qualify through
appropriate gate.

Now, let’s discuss each stage-gate of new product
development in detail.

Stage 0: Idea
Discovery:

New ideas are be generated by using multiple approaches like:

Conducting marketing research to find out the
consumers' needs and wants.

Inviting suggestions from employees, consumers,
vendors and partners.

Brainstorming suggestions for new-product ideas.

Tracking global trends by searching in different
markets viz., national and international markets.

Exploring disruptive innovations to create new
products.

Tracking competitors for new products.

Ideas are screened for its uniqueness, market perception, and
competitive scenario to qualify Gate0.

Stage 1: Scoping:

In this stage, the gap analysis is done between customer
needs and available solutions. Once a gap is identified between customer needs
and existing products, a customer value proposition (CVP) is drafted. During
this time, the product manager conducts surveys and interviews with existing
and potential customers, along with staff members. This stage also lets product
manager initiate discussion with the vendor to establish a strategic
collaboration for the product development, support and launch. The Scoping
stage is concluded by preparing the market requirement document to qualify Gate
1.

This is the last phase of concept development where it is
crucial for product manager to perform a solid analysis before they begin
developing the product. This phase is generally difficult, complex, and
resource-intensive. To begin with this
stage, product definition and analysis are carried out by using the gap
analysis, market research to determine the market size and segmentation, growth
rate followed by competitive analysis. This will not only help you build a
great product, but will also help in determining how and where to launch your
new product.

Next, a technically feasible product concept is prepared,
often called PoC (Proof of concept). Once the technical feasibility is
established, the prototypes are developed and presented to staff and customers
to gain feedback and gauge customer reaction. An analysis of production and
operations cost along with the market and launch cost analysis is also carried
out in-parallel to PoC testing.

On completing the technical feasibility test, a business
case document for the product is prepared. This document set consists of:

Essentially the
execution stage of the product development, the most preferred process used is an
Agile methodology wherein the product manager shares user stories with the
project managers who specifies the product to be developed by the development
team. The development team maps out a realistic timeline with specific
milestones that are described as SMART: specific, measurable, actionable,
realistic, and time-bound. In the development phase, the product builds
momentum as more resources are committed to the project and makes full use of
cross-functional teamwork as the marketing, technical, manufacturing, and sales
departments all come together to offer their expert opinions.

The criteria to pass gate 3 are quality of work, adhering to
development timeline, product consistency with the original definition of the
product, and accepted maintenance cost of the product.

Stage 4: Testing
and Validation

This phase provides
validation for the product under development. A long list of tests is carried
out to validate the product including at least:

White box & Black box testing

Regression and Performance testing

User acceptance testing

Functional & Non-functional testing

Alpha Testing

Beta testing

The gate 4 is the final gate and opens the door for full
commercialization, i.e. market launch and full production of the product. Criteria
for passing gate 4 largely focus on test results, user experience, organizational
readiness for the product, and GTM execution.

Stage 5: Launch

Stage 5 involves execution of GTM (Go-to-market) strategy and
the operational plan. Industrial set-up for mass production of the product is
done, the distribution channel is established and the selling begins.

Post-launching the product, the product review plan is
executed focusing on the product performance measured mainly in terms of market
share, growth rate and profitability. A debriefing document is prepared periodically
and the product is customized or modified to adapt market requirements and
feedback.

Mind it:

The entire new product development process is an ever
evolving platform where product managers and entire organization learns from
errors, design mistakes, losses. Having the entire team working in close synchronization
will ensure creating and launching successful products. Productivity during
product development can be achieved if, and only if, goals are clearly defined
along the way and each process has contingencies clearly outlined on paper.

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

What is the difference between a
Project Manager and a Product Manager?”

This is precisely the question people
ask when I say that I transitioned my career from Project Management to Product
Management. In general, most people and organizations understand the role of a
project manager imputing the position being popular across the organizations for
long. However the product manager’s role
varies widely from one industry to another.
The role also varies by the size of an organization.Here is my take on the two roles
and the difference between them:Product Managers are expected to identify customer needs, envision
and design the product that creates value for the customers, take it to the
market and generate revenue for the organization. They are focused on
end-to-end life cycle of an identified value-proposition.Whereas, the Project Managers have a narrower scope and engagements span, responsible
for the successful delivery of a project – one time endeavor with a scope,
deadline, budget and other constraints. They ensure quality and timely delivery
of the outcome using a specific set of resources.Frameworks comparison for Product
Management and Project Management:To
understand better the differences between the two roles, we should first
understand the framework that governs the product life-cycle management:

Project Management Life-cycle

As per PMI (project Management Institute), every project life cycle
has 5 stages: Initiation, Planning, Execution, Monitoring and Control and
Closing and nine knowledge areas required for effectively managing any project:
Integrate, Scope, Time, Cost, Quality, HR, Communicate, Risk and Procure.

Product Management Life-cycle

On the other hand, a product life cycle
has seven different stages: Ideation, Planning, Development, Qualify, Launch, and
Deliver and eventually Retire and requires expertise in knowledge areas of Organization,
Market, Business, Customer and Product.The two frameworks are not
independent and co-exist in a product life cycle. Each phase of product management
has one full life-cycle of project management. An example is that every
planning stage of a product has 5 stages of project management, i.e. initiating
to planning to executing to monitoring to closing. Similarly, the launch phase
of product also has 5 project stages, i.e. initiate, plan execute, monitor and
close.

Product Management and Project Management co-existence

A tabularized comparison between key deliverables
for Product Managers and Project Managers here:

Similarities and common challenges:They manage end-to-end life cycle
of their deliverable. They co-exist and collaborate to drive strategic initiatives,
guide key activities and decisions, and significantly impact over P&L
statement. Both the jobs lack direct authority to carry out responsibilities;
they have little influence over cross-functional teams. Product Managers guide
key decisions to maximize value and create new streams and Project managers
ensure maximize quality and minimize risk.One of the key challenges of the
roles is that they can be at odds with each other at times. When a product
manager wants to add a lot of features to meet identified customer needs, the
project manager may want to keep the scope as small as possible so that the project
is delivered on time and under budget. An appropriate way to resolve the
conflict is to understand each other’s requirements and constraints, making a
perfect balance between meaningful deliverable and restraints. Good project
managers know that the true success of a project is timely delivery meeting budget
and other constraints ensuring that it meets the defined goals and objectives.
Good product managers know that all the features in the world will not matter
if the project is continually delayed and never makes it to market or if it is
too over budget to be completed.Few important points to keep in
mind are:

Product
Management and Project Management roles co-exist and cannot work in isolation.

Skills,
expertise and traits required to efficiently carry out the two tasks are very
different from each other.

Good
product managers spend as much time with the team as project managers.

The
less time product managers spend on project management, the more time they will
be able to create a value for their customers.

Friday, August 8, 2014

Often intrigued by the role of Product Manager,
the so-called mini-CEO, I haven’t found any source that exactly defines what
Product Management is. An online search
for understanding this role makes the task more confusing and difficult attributing
its incredible breadth, specifically in the context of the technology industry. The best definition so far for the role is given by Marty Cagan in his book “Inspired” as the job of the
product manager is “to discover a product that is valuable, usable and
feasible”.

As I understand, the Product Manager identifies a market
problem, quantifies the opportunity to make sure it’s big enough to generate
profit, and then articulates the problem to the rest of the organization to
build a product that caters to the precise problem of the customer. The job of
a product manager is central to the business requiring interaction with senior management, technology and marketing
functions. A candidate desiring to excel at product management needs to be equally
conversant in all three dimensions equaled.

Product Management Triad

Product Management job:

The job of a Product Manager starts with setting a vision
for the product, engaging him into lots of research to identify right market,
target customers and the problem they have that he is trying to solve. Product
managers process huge amount of information in the form of client feedback,
quantitative data from web analytics, research reports, market trends and
statistics, and extract useful insight to define a vision for the product. Once
the product is envisioned, Product Manager performs forecasting and financial projections
based on market research and shares the same along with vision with senior executives
to secure budgets, staff and targets.

Based on the vision, commitments and budgets, Product
Manager builds a roadmap and iterative plan along with user-stories and other
documents to enable development teams for incremental improvements and iterative
development. As the product progresses with the development and incorporating customer
voice, Product Manager gets detail oriented redefining and refining scope
ensuring not to derail from the original vision of the product.

Product Manager also prepares a Go-to-market strategy for
the product identifying customer segmentation, messaging goal and strategy along
with a value proposition for the customers to share with marketing and sales team
who eventually interact with customers, the end-users of the product. Once the
product is out in the market, product managers start pouring over data on
consumer insights again, carefully observing product use, reaching out to
customers, taking their feedback and analyzing back again the initial
assessment about the problem that they were trying to solve, connecting the
product with the user and monetizing the product or underlying technology.

WOW!!!

Surely, it sounds a tough job, but there is more fun, dirt
and money involved because in all eventualities, the product manager owns the
market acceptance of the product. Product Managers interact with people from
almost every domain of the business ecosystem, right from CEOs to technologists
to marketers to the whole crowd of your product users making them the unsung
hero of business world.

Friday, August 1, 2014

Welcome to
the blog – I’ve thinking of setting up for a long time. A passionate forPRODUCT MANAGEMENT, my
enthusiasm, love and experience (so far) with this domain of management has
compelled me to come out in the open and express my opinion on various aspects
of it.

An IT
professional for 7 years, I’ve been into Product Management for a year now
working on end-to-end product life-cycle from product concept to launch for
different categories including mobile apps and s/w to VAS services to
internet-of-things to healthcare platform.

I’m
currently working for a healthcare start-up in US handling various aspects of
product management. Ideally, I would like to update the blog as I keep on
learning, however occasionally I will also be posting blog on topics that are
of interest to product manages.

This blog
will be considered a success if it helps anyone learn product management,
improve their performance or at-least enables someone take a decision that
makes his/ her product a success.